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{"id":18850,"date":"2017-05-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-05T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=573"},"modified":"2017-05-05T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-05-05T00:00:00","slug":"blue-arrogance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2017\/05\/blue-arrogance\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Arrogance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

A<\/span>t the Daily Beast<\/em><\/a>, Joel Kotkin exposes the \u201carrogance of Blue America,\u201d expressed in talk of Blue State secession and contempt for Red State Trump country. According to Kotkin, \u201cThe blue bourgeoisie\u2019s self-celebration rests on multiple misunderstandings of geography, demography, and economics. To be sure, the deep blue cites are vitally important but it\u2019s increasingly red states, and regions, that provide critical opportunities for upward mobility for middle- and working-class families.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blue Staters boast that \u201cten largest metropolitan economies represents over one-third of the national GDP.\u201d But, outside New York City, \u201cthe other nine largest metropolitan economies are . . . slightly\u00a0more\u00a0<\/em>suburban than the national major metropolitan area average, with 86 percent of their residents inhabiting suburban and exurban areas.\u00a0In some of our most dynamic urban regions, such as Phoenix, virtually no part of the region can be made to fit into a Manhattan-, Brooklyn-, or even San Francisco-style definition of urbanity. Since 2010 more than 80 percent of all new jobs in our 53 leading metropolitan regions have been in suburban locations. The San Jose area, the epicenter of the \u2018new economy,\u2019 may be congested but it is not traditionally urban\u2014most people there live in single-family houses, and barely 5 percent of commuters take transit. Want to find dense urbanity in San Jose? You\u2019ll miss it if you drive for more than 10 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even in the Bluest of Blue areas, the center of innovation is often outside urban areas: \u201ceven in the ultra-blue Bay Area, the suburban Valley\u2019s tech and\u00a0STEM worker\u00a0population per capita is twice that of San Francisco. In southern California, suburban Orange County has over 30 percent more STEM workers per capita than far more urban Los Angeles.\u00a0. . . Seattle\u2019s suburban Bellevue and Redmond are home to substantial IT operations, including the large Microsoft headquarters facility. Much of Portland\u2019s Silicon Forest is located in suburban Washington County.\u201d<\/p>\n

Red States are not full of ignorant, uneducated yahoos. In fact, Red State manufacturers employ most of our STEM workers and engineers. The industries of the American heartland (agriculture, energy) are innovative, increasingly productive, and account for much of America\u2019s export trade: \u201cIn 2015, the U.S. exported $2.23 trillion worth of goods and services combined. Of the total, only $716.4 billion, or about a third, consisted of services.\u00a0In contrast, manufactured goods accounted for 50 percent\u00a0of all exports.\u00a0Intellectual property payments, like royalties to Silicon Valley tech companies and entrepreneurs, amounted to $126.5 billion\u2014just 18 percent of service exports and less than 6 percent of total exports of goods and services combined, barely even with agriculture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blue State \u201coikophobia\u201d is, in short, no more defensible than its Red State equivalent.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"